It was THAT bad.

And it was unthinkable because of the battery overhead. It was absolutely ridiculous — it still is. Try using GPS for any length of time on your handset and watch the battery drain in near-real time.

It was worse, of course, with the first generation handsets featuring GPS. It was functionally rubbish too. I remember being able to get a GPS fix on my N95 by leaving it on a wall for more than 10 minutes.

It’s still bad today. But one of the major reasons we have GPS chips in our phones is because the mobile operator couldn’t get it’s act together.

I use the phrase ‘mobile operator’ in a global sense. Way back in… oh, I dunno, say 2005 (from my rough memory), one of the leading aggregators of the day called me up to explain that ‘location’ was now possible.

“Just like SMS,” the guy said, “You just give us the phone number and we connect to the operator’s systems and boom, you’ll get the lat/lon coordinates back. Or a post code if you like.”

It sounded fantastic.

“Yeah, the networks just do a triangulation on the cell towers,” he explained, “It’s pretty smart.”

“When can I use it?” I asked, wondering if we could somehow integrate the technology into our nightclub text-to-screen systems. It would have been flipping genius.

“Well, they’re being strict about look-ups,” the chap continued, “So you’ll need to get explicit authorisation first from any users.”

That’s doable, I thought.

“Oh, and it’s 12 pence per lookup.”

You what?

He wasn’t kidding. There was some model that if we paid a stupidly expensive fixed sum, we could have ‘unlimited’ look-ups. But the dicks at the operator — and I do mean TOTAL NUMBSKULLS — decided that since SMS messages were flying off the shelves at 12p-a-pop, they might as well use precisely the same billing mechanism for the developers looking to access the facility.

I spoke to lots of companies who’d have used look-ups. I’d have used them day-in-day-out at our nightclub text service. It would have been invaluable. Geez, the applications, the possibilities.

But the revenue model wouldn’t work.

So we — that is, the market — went OTT. Over-the-top. Apple cracked it with their mix of “A-GPS” and Skyhook Wireless integration that made the whole thing work like magic.

And nobody used the mobile operator’s location look-up technology.

So it is with no small amount of delight that I report to you today that BlueVia, Telefonica’s developer arm, has now launched an all new location API to the existing wealth of capabilities. First — and most important — it’s entirely free. Second, it allows you to query a customer’s longitude, latitude, altitude, location accuracy and timestamp.

What are the implications of this? Well, it means that any application you’re currently considering for deployment on BlueVia can now make use of location (in the United Kingdom — I’m sure BlueVia will be aiming to extend this feature out to the other 6 supported countries soon).

However, I’d like developers to consider going one-step further. For example, if your application requires the use of GPS just to establish a ‘general’ location (e.g. High Street, Marlow), you can now opt to check if the user is an o2 customer using the BlueVia API. Just one API call. And if they are, store that information so that whenever you need to access their location, AVOID killing their battery and place a network lookup API call instead. Just for o2 customers. They’ll love you for it.

Now. There’s another application I’m thinking of — right away — that I want to see.

I use Google Latitude. I quite enjoy it. Sometimes it’s rather useful. But, unfortunately, there’s a stupid battery overhead. Thousands of well meaning mobile phone luvvies will claim it’s minimal. It’s not. It’s at least 5-8% I reckon. Of the day’s use. I can’t use it on my BlackBerry — I literally have to exit Google Maps manually every time I’m not using it so that my BlackBerry doesn’t leak battery through Google Maps.

On the iPhone, the battery impact is less pronounced but it’s STILL there. Maybe 5%. And 5%, when the handset can’t blow it’s nose without dropping 10% battery, is very important to me.

But I like Latitude. I like my friends and contacts knowing where I am.

So here’s my idea for the BlueVia API: A system that pings my location via the BlueVia API once per hour and feeds this information into Google Apps. Or even every 30 minutes. Who cares? It’s free! It’s a resource sitting there. o2 *ALREADY* knows where my phone is. There is NO battery impact. At all.

FINALLY!

There are tons of possible uses for BlueVia’s new location API. It’s a shame it’s only available for o2 UK at the moment, but that’s still tens of millions of accessible users. And of course, it doesn’t matter what phone they use.

And just how easy is it to integrate into your code?

Watch this.

Or, read this, rather:

(You’ve already added the BlueVia library into your PHP/whatever script, right)

Done.

LOVE it. LOVE it!

Get stuck in at bluevia.com.

So GPS navigation has been around for a while, at the top of the range, of course Garmin and TomTom units, with their “widescreen” versions about 4.3inches diagonal. So how about having a 10 inch Sat-Nav? Daft idea? Well I have travelled across Europe by car on numerous occasions, and I would have been quite happy to have a full size digital map. In order for it to be actually useful, it would need to have an autonomously running GPS module, not needing 3G connection to pinpoint your location.

Here comes the Nokia Booklet 3G, with a built-in GPS, and accelerometer, and 3G. However, typical Nokia, some of these functions are completely useless as you take the device out of the box.

My mother visited for a week, she has been to the UK only a handful of times and there were lots of places she wanted to see. As you can imagine, there was lots of driving, one of the days we did over 400miles! The Nokia was with us all the time and never let me down. Never did it lose signal or battery power, so it was easy to identify our next destination as we were on the move. Even at motorway speeds the 3G internet was flawless! Now what if… What if I could use the Booklet instead of my Garmin SatNav? It would be even more amazing, wouldn’t it?!

I’ve researched into the issue and with quite some fiddling around I found out how to make it work. Here is a picture of a basic application that shows the feed from the Nokia GPS unit.

If you wanted real navigation that works offline, Garmin Mobile is the way to go! Here is a snapshot of the signal strength inside a building. Impressive, isn’t it?

And finally, the ultimate challenge! Putting the Nokia Booklet 3G to the test, by using its GPS module to plot the location and its 3G internet for streaming maps on Google Earth, where you can also ask for directions on the go.

In the last analysis, the capabilities of this little netbook are substantial! However, there could have been more software support from Nokia.

Next week I’m aiming to publish a series of opinions on what’s going on with mobile location and location based services. Please, please tell me that best practice isn’t about sticking your logo on Foursquare?

I’d welcome 300-400 words from executives based in and around the mobile industry discussing what they see as best practice in location based services.

Who’s leading the pack? Who’s setting the market alight? What’s coming next? Who’s been busy? What trends are you seeing? How have smartphones changed things? Is it all about apps or are we seeing more usage of network-based lookup/location services?

I’ve absolutely no problem about contributors blowing their own trumpet, in fact I positively encourage it. The Mobile Industry Review audience are adept at parsing marketing hype from reality so if you’re doing really well with location based services, we’d all like to know about it.

Do include case studies or examples. Do include numbers/statistics. Don’t hesitate to mention the great work you’ve done for X or Y brands.

How to engage with me:

1. I’m not good on the phone at the moment as there’s a lot moving, so email is best.

2. Drop me a note by email — ewan@mobileindustyreview.com — with a quick overview of what you’re proposing. I’ll confirm and book a spot for the contribution in next week’s publishing schedule.

3. Final deliverables:
- 300-400 words (or more, if warranted)
- Website link for the contributor
- One sentence bio of the contributor

Any questions? Drop me a note!

I absolutely cannot stand this check-in culture that has spread across the ‘connected’ social media masses. It’s not just FourSquare… everyone’s doing it. I can’t move for check-in competitions and updated services that now come with check-in features. You can now get check-in aggregators.

A check-in — the act of physically taking out your phone, running an application, waiting for it to locate you and then choosing your location from a supplied list — is silly. It’s like having to enable the WinSock driver on your Windows 3.1 system every time you want to connect to the internet. It’s like having to click ‘connect’ on an old Nokia phone every time you actually want to connect to the internet.

I just want it to happen. I don’t want to force followers to read a ridiculous update message because I’m at the dry cleaners and a little bit bored for 20 seconds.

My preference for location based service functionality is for it to work in the background. Quietly.

Leaving aside the gaming features that many enjoy (“ooh, I’m at the coffee shop, time to check-in… ooh, I’m at the chemist, time to check-in…”), location should run in the background until such time as it is needed, rather than blaring all over the place.

I should be able to automatically update my location status for a predefined list of friends and associates. Much like the way Google Latitude works, but without the constant battery drain.

I should then have the opportunity to be notified if a friend is nearby. Or, ideally, I should get a visual cue when I look at my phone — for example, the top section of the screen might turn a darker shade or red to indicate the nearby presence of a friend.

This is why I don’t use any check-in services at the moment.

I’m looking forward to seeing the next generation of mobile interfaces that support this kind of constant ambient location services.

Rummble, the personalised mobile location recommendations service, just got $800k of funding from m8 Capital. Congratulations all!

Rummble offers users a ‘page rank for the physical world’ and works across multiple mobile platforms and the web. Definitely download it and take a look.

The funds will help the company develop their application UI and expand the team. I’m looking forward to great things!

Definitely check out the service when you can — it’s available for iPhone, Android, Windows, Vodafone 360 and they’ve even got a mobile web option at http://m.rummble.com.

Got Rummble already? Add me — I’m: ewanmacleod

Here are the details:

Background

WaveMarket is the hottest startup in location based services. We are growing rapidly and are seeking a technically-oriented Smartphone Developer Community Manager to join our team.

Our newest and most cutting edge product is an SDK and client library for iPhone and Android developers that helps them better monetize the location data they’re collecting from end users of their apps. Developers can use this data to gain deeper insight into who is using their apps and to improve their in-app experience.

We have a growing community of smartphone app developers, and we need a charismatic evangelist to engage and cultivate this community.

The Job

You love getting into technical debates. You post frequently on tech boards. You are an effective communicator, are very comfortable engaging with engineers, and are effective at building trust and making connections. At the same time, you have deep technical chops, can write sample code and demo apps, and speak intelligently about the nuances of technology to engineers.

What will you need to do?

Own the voice of the community. Communicate regularly with the developer community, who is the customer, to gain a deep understanding of their needs and help prioritize our feature investments. We help developers make more $ from their apps with free tools. Your job is to know the developer.

Market and evangelize, grow the community. Actively monitor the trends and pulse of the market around location technologies, including major announcements and activities of competition. Figure out where the market is going and filter the hype from the substance while at the same time evangelizing the platform to both existing and new developers, media and press. Own outbound communications including blogs, tweets, conferences, postings on various online communities, etc.

Source, close, and manage deals. Work closely with the WaveMarket business team to proactively engage with and onboard new developers, manage existing developers, and work with developers to advance them through the funnel from initial connection to launch.

Sound exciting? We want to meet you, particularly if you have:
• A technical bachelors or masters degree (CS, EE) from a top university
• 3 years of professional work experience minimum
• Experience writing code for smartphone apps, strong preference for iPhone and Android (even if you’re no longer doing it.
• Strong writing and communication skills
• High level of comfort speaking in front of others
• Marketing and/or Product Experience, particularly of software products
• Experience marketing to / interacting with software developers
• A passion for cutting edge technologies

To get the ball rolling, whack your resume/CV to: pmjobs at wavemarket.com

If your phone doesn’t have built-in location features (and it won’t if it’s a low cost device), then decent GPS navigation will require you to go and buy a personal navigation device or “PND” as they are known. Often that PND could end up costing 5 times as much as your actual handset.

What do you do if you’ve got 5,000 employees all using some fairly reliable handsets without GPS facilities… and you’d like to give them all mobile navigation service?

The answer is talk with BlueSky Positioning and Telmap. They’ve integrated real-time location-based navigation services into a sim card with A-GPS facilities.

I like the idea of being able to augment mid-range handsets in this way. You can run it on cheap-as-chips handsets but they’ll need to be able to run the Telmap software (which might be a big ask).

For most people, A-GPS (“network-assisted-GPS”) is a fairly good alternative. You won’t necessarily get a precise location fix, but it should be good enough to handle most navigation requirements.

Since we’re talking about the sim card, there’s a lot of potential possibilities there for operators to control the offering, particularly for specific market segments and not necessarily for consumers.

You can read more about the offering here.

I’ve been playing with LoKast for a few days and it’s raised some rather exciting possibilities. The application turns your iPhone into a two-way media server, enabling you to rapidly share any of your media (photos, video, contacts, music) to anyone else using the app on the same WiFi or Bluetooth connection.

My first reaction was ‘well, there’s just me at home, so…’ — but that’s to miss the point with LoKast. For any young’n'hip things regularly hitting music venues or gigs, LoKast could be hugely valuable. Provided you’re both running the app (and that’s the main issue) you can swiftly discover random people in your vicinity and start browsing the media they’ve elected to make public.

It’s an absolute breeze to use. Fire it up, give yourself a name, choose a profile photo and start tapping media you’d like to share. It’s stupidly fast — of course — because you’re not using the internet, you’re using the local connection.

‘Local-casting’ will typically work when you’re within 300ft of other LoKast users — provided there’s WiFi (or if there’s not, Bluetooth is a useful fall back).

Think about using it at a sports stadium, for example. That could be a rather interesting experience. One imagines you might be able to find some fantastic photos, videos and audio related to your team. But LoKast could be phenomenally useful around the music scene for anyone who’d like to receive (or distribute!) all kinds of band or artist related media.

Flip up the app, browse the users and you’re immediately browsing their public content. Click the ‘add’ button on anything and it’s yours (apart from DRM protected music — DRM music offers you a 30-second clip and the option to buy the track on iTunes — fair enough).

I love it’s simplicity. It’s essentially just a nice skin on top of a web server — but the simplicity is what is beginning to swiftly engage users. I hear it’s getting a riotous reception at the mediafest that is SXSX. I can well imagine why. I’m particularly keen on how the app ushers in an era of disposable media — the transitory experience of sharing media, never to be repeated again. Forget becoming friends or ‘adding people’, this is all about the media.

I’m not entirely sure where LoKast could go. I certainly think that if some of the cool’n'hip iPhone users pick it up around the music/gigs/events space, it’ll break out quickly from SXSX.

I think music is the way ahead though. Indeed, I understand that artists such as The Boxer Rebellion, The Ruse, Bazaar Royale, BlackMahal and Katia have all signed up to use LoKast at their events this month. I can imagine a lot of users all flipping up LoKast on their iPhone at the instruction of the band they’re watching. Very interesting indeed.

Speaking of SXSX, Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Pictures are reportedly planning on using LoKast to promote their new movies at one of the upcoming SXSX events. Again, that’s another area that makes a heck of a lot of sense.

I’ve made a quick video walk-through of LoKast so you can see some of the basic features in action:

You can, of course, find LoKast in the iTunes App Store (iTunes link — free). Enjoy…

Turns out you can do quite a lot.

At some point last week, I devolved into a 12 year old hacker, and I spent many spare hours (and my computer’s spare cycles) abusing the system with a set of scripts operating fake accounts. Not only did I add new venues like the North Pole, but I started persistently checking into coveted landmarks, like the Statue of Liberty.

The post’s author, KrazyDad, decided to get smart with all those Starbucks Mayor wannabes. Are you familiar with the behaviour here? Just in case you’re not, one of the most popular — or at least, best known — uses of FourSquare is to check-in to your local Starbucks. Why? Well it’s simple: There’s always a long queue and, you know, it’s a good game. It doesn’t really appeal to me, but there’s a lot of others who obsess over checking into their local ‘bucks in order to maintain their ‘Mayor’ status.

KrazyDad decided to have a bit of fun with them. Heh:

I created five ‘Java Monkeys’ which grabbed about 120 different Starbucks in different regions (east, west, midwest, south, intl). I identified and targeted hotly contested Starbucks by searching Twitter for recent oustings. My script automatically visited those ones, to the consternation of the new mayors.

The ‘Java Monkeys’ got the biggest reactions. FourSquare users get far more irate when they lose mayorship of a Starbucks, as compared to a Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore. People are much more attached to the small places they visit over and over, and have some personal investment in. The smaller the venue, the bigger the value.

What KrazyDad has exposed is that the FourSquare concept is heavily dependent on playing fair. That’s fine when you’ve a few hundred thousand in-the-know geeks playing along. But that doesn’t scale at all, unfortunately, because there’s quite a lot of human nature ready to game the system, even if all you’re getting is an extra badge.

One of the FourSquare representatives commented on the post to say they’ve got some ideas in the works to try and prevent such gaming.

If you’re a FourSquare enthusiast and you’ve been wondering why your friend is always ahead of you, take note.

The word on the grapevine is that Rummble — having worked really hard on a very neat looking Vodafone 360 app — were due to get all sorts of on-handset distribution and a heck of a lot of Vodafone love. This is good news given Rummble is a home-grown British startup very well deserving of the attentions of the likes of Big Red.

But no.

I can’t quite imagine the frustration of the Rummble team wondering why Vodafone has plonked out this announcement.

The message is quite clear for British and European startups (as TechCrunch points out regarding Bambuser): Don’t expect a leg up from British operators.

Can anyone give me an example of a British mobile startup that’s been ‘made’ (or at least, substantially helped out) through it’s association with a British mobile operator? There must be some?

Mobile Monday Silicon Valley was fantastic this evening. There was a huge turnout on an uncharacteristically rainy San Francisco evening for the Location-Aware app demo evening.

Skyhook Wireless kindly underwrote the bar and gave a pitch at the beginning of the series of presentations, outlining their rather excellent range of location services available to mobile developers. I managed to catch Skyhook’s Director of Marketing, Kate Imbach, on camera discussing the merits of their offering. Suffice to say if you’re a developer and you’d like to integrate location based services (e.g. Find Me) into your app, definitely, definitely talk to Skyhook.

Here are the companies who presented:

• Crazymenu.com – Launched their iPhone (lunchtime) online restaurant discovery and ordering facility. I really liked their concept. I’m going to look for it in the iPhone app store.
• Cristdrive – Their application, Voilà, will simply and elegantly tell any of your online services where you are, right now. $0.99 in the app store.
• Retronyms – Couldn’t make it for some reason so Kate from Skyhook did her best with their presentation. They’ve got a rather interesting GPS game by the name of Seek ‘n Spell going live. Check their site.
• Wertago – Showed off their app offering city nightlife in the palm of your hand. Nice!
• Geoterrestrial – GPSToday, a comprehensive Windows Mobile application offering an array of GPS related services. If you’re into location services, definitely check out what they’ve created — amongst other features, it’ll sit in the background and continually tell folk where you are.
• HearPlanet – Dale Larson’s audio city guides deliver location information that really speaks to you. You can, as the site puts it, ‘leave those bulky tour books behind and let HearPlanet (iPhone) show you the way. Get it on the App Store. It’s the #2 rated Travel app at the moment and they’ve had almost 500k downloads so far.
• Life360 – Trades on fear. But in a good way. Their mobile (and desktop) services deliver you instant safety, security and peace of mind. I’m going to get this for my wife and I. Google Latitude helps show where we both are.. but I want more than that. I particularly like their ‘find your family in an emergency’ facilities.
• Carrrmatey by Lionebra –> Brought the house down. So much so that I filmed their pitch. I think the audience were really taken with the pirate theme. It’s a really smart utility that records where you left your car, reminds you to return at appointed times (for meters) and guides you back to your car — rather useful if you keep on forgetting where you parked.

I managed to get some good video interviews tonight — I was going to hold them back until we’ve launched with the nice new look and feel, but it’s al about content, right? I’m going to aim to get the first lot of videos up tomorrow morning.

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Latitude, if you’re not familiar with it, is an add-on to Google Maps that (amongst other features) overlays an avatar of your friends on Google Maps. So if you’re out-and-about you can see their location. Or if you’re on your desktop you can see a large Google Map of your friends.

Typically innovative, Google decided to take things to the next level. Wouldn’t it be neat that, if you had sufficient friends each with a T-Mobile G1 (for example), you could position them on the map to spell out a message.

Granted, you’d need to have quite a bit of spare time. But it’s doable, right?

Right.

The Google Latitude team stuck their money where their mouth is and had a bit of fun, thus:

That there is a screenshot of a Google Maps screen spelling out ‘Hi Mom’ across central San Francisco. Each little square you see is an avatar representing a physical Google team member with a phone standing in the corresponding physical location in San Francisco.

The enterprising chaps also made a video documenting the process of setting this up:

There is, I suspect, limited value in spelling out messages using your friends on Google Maps / Latitude. But it’s a super proof-of-concept for the technology.

And a reminder to get on Latitude.

Latitude, of course, isn’t yet available for the iPhone so that’s most of San Francisco ruled out. But for everyone back in Europe sporting your common-or-garden N-Series Nokia device, perhaps it’s time you and your friends spent this Saturday spelling out ‘Hello Your Majesty’ across a map of London.

(You’ll need about 10-12 friends per character.)

Building on the search feature of FoneFood this application takes advantage of the magnetometer (compass to you and me) and GPS built into the G1 to locate entertainment venues, restaurants, landmarks and other stuff on a radar-like interface.  At last!  A way to find the nearest Pizza Express wherever you are without relying on Ewan’s legendary instinct.

We’re going to try it out as soon as we can.

Check it out:

Alas there was no smoke and daggers and X-Files Cancerman-style shenanigans as per my post this morning. I got a little bit carried away.

I actually got a phone call from Ray Haddow, one of the chaps in Nokia’s Social Media/Communications team. Ray asked if I’d like to see round one of the company’s handset test labs (they’ve got 11 in total around the planet).

“Yes,” I said, “With bells on.”

And so I arrived shrouded in secrecy, joined by Steve Litchfield (All About Symbian) and the dudes from Pocket Lint. No one’s ever got to see round this lab before — and whilst Ray specifically pointed out that there wouldn’t be any new handsets or announcements — the opportunity to see what lengths Nokia goes in order to test their handsets.

They don’t just drop a few and stick them together with sellotape and try again to check out the designs. Oh no. They do a considerable amount of testing.

And I got to see more or less all of their major tests — and film it. The footage is ripping off the camera at the moment and I’ll have some stuff up shortly. If you’re anywhere near describing yourself as a Nokia fan, you will want to see this…

A chap in an overcoat was standing by the car’s open door and as I pulled up, he walked over to me and passed an unmarked padded envelope in through my opened window.

“Your instructions for the visit,” he said, before turning smartly away.

Within seconds the car was gone and I was alone.

I ripped open the envelope as my pulse rate quickened. Inside there was a single A4 sheet.

From the like of my N95, I saw the page was completely blank except for this:

0870 521 3232. 8am. 19-11-08. 112345-998407.

So, I’m going to phone that number tomorrow (Wednesday) at precisely 8am to get my next set of instructions.

If there’s phone signal, I’ll try and update you via Ping.fm, provided they don’t take my Blackberry off me when I arrive.

This addition comes right after the location team released new optimizations that enhanced the abilities of Google Maps to calculate your location even more accurately. 

My Location with Wi-Fi works pretty much similar to how your location is calculated based on Cell tower information. In this, information transmitted by Wi-Fi access points is used to calculate your location. Theoretically, since the range of the routers are very small compared to that of a cell tower, the location info calculated is more accurate.

However, they go onto mention that even though WiFi based location is available in many of the major cities in the world, the coverage and accuracy may vary. 

Is this what Ewan needed?

Do you see this as a feature that’ll change how you use Google Maps?

We were going to go to the Mobyko party tomorrow night and film from there — but alas, it’s been moved.

So we’re locationless at the moment. Do you have any ideas for a nice bar, or funky office in the West End/Central London?

Maybe a nice funky mobile operator / PR / Developer / Mobile marketing office? What d’ya think?

If so: Shoot me an email.

It looks like Nokia’s planning to cannibalise some of the features from Plazes, with the company saying its going to extend its own context-based services with the social presence and time-based activity planning features Plazes has.

Given Nokia has spent a lot of cash mapping and/or navigation companies – think Gate5 and Navteq – it’s little wonder that it’s now looking for new services to offer on top of the maps and new ways to monetise them. Social networking though is mostly an ads fuelled business – I wonder if Nokia will be sticking with that model, or experimenting with charging users a subscription for the geographic services.